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A Big Disease With A Little Name

A Big Disease with a Little Name: The Atlanta Buyers Club

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The Atlanta Buyers Club

A Big Disease with a Little Name

BBC Radio 4 - A Big Disease with a Little Name, The Atlanta Buyers Club

Underground buyers clubs sold experimental AIDS drugs before regulators approved them.

Buyers clubs were underground operations that sold experimental AIDS drugs before they were approved by regulators. Christopher Harris tells the story of running Atlanta's club.

In the first decade of the AIDS epidemic, officially licensed drugs were hard to come by, but there were plenty being trialled around the world. 

As a result, a network of underground operations began to spring up where these experimental drugs were bought and distributed to AIDS patients who didn't have time to sit and wait for drug regulators to make their minds up about approving new treatments. 

Diagnosed with AIDS himself, Christopher Harris went in search of anything which might help prolong his life and found a buyers club being run out of a derelict building in his hometown of Atlanta - and he was soon helping to run the operation.

Narrator: Chris Pavlo
Producer: Richard Fenton-Smith

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Factual: Health & Wellbeing

Charting the early years of the AIDS crisis, as told by the people who lived through it

Charting the early years of the AIDS crisis, as told by the people who lived through it, from patients to medical staff, activists and politicians.

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